In July 2009 Amazon.com bought online shoe retailer Zappos.com for $887.9 million from entrepreneur Tony Hsieh (shown).
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, said he was motivated to buy because Zappos had a unique corporate culture and brand. But it was Hsieh's ability to communicate the essence of these using Twitter that captured a national audience and created a competitive selling advantage.
Hsieh opened his Twitter account in June 2007 and by 2009 had over 1.5 million followers, one of the top 100 followed accounts in the country.
Surprising to many Hsieh, did NOT Tweet about: shoes, online retailing, or special shoe offers. No shoe Tweets? Nope. In fact, Hsieh only owned 10 pairs of shoes and was rumored not to know much about any of them.
Here is what Hsieh did Tweet about: customer service.
Why was this content strategy so successful? Two reasons:
1. The people side of customer service is more interesting than shoes. Even if you are a shoe fanatic, there thousands of shoe websites to visit. One more Twitter account would not make a difference.
2. Customer service is the key issue holding back potential shoe customers from buying online. Selling books online is easy because the book you buy in a store is as good as the same book you buy online. But a when buying a pair shoes, their fit is critical. In a store, you can try them on, and the fit is assured. But buying shoes online is a big risk unless the online retailer has a high enough level of customer service to overcome the “fitting” problem. Customers that bought into Hsieh's obsessive view of customer service were more likely to give online shoe shopping a try. That was the defining moment, after that, about 75% of Zappos sales came from repeat customers.
Hsieh's content strategy was not to share a series of short and clever Tweets, rather to communicate a larger vision. Here is his explanation:
"Think of each tweet as a dot on a piece of paper. Any single tweet, just like any single dot, by itself can be insignificant and meaningless. But, if over time, you end up with a lot of tweets, it’s like having a lot of dots drawn on a piece of paper. Eventually there are enough dots for your followers to connect them together. And if you connect the dots, in the aggregate it paints a picture of you and/or your company, and it’s that total picture that is your brand.
Think of each tweet as a dot on a piece of paper. Any single tweet, just like any single dot, by itself can be insignificant and meaningless. But, if over time, you end up with a lot of tweets, it’s like having a lot of dots drawn on a piece of paper. Eventually there are enough dots for your followers to connect them together. And if you connect the dots, in the aggregate it paints a picture of you and/or your company, and it’s that total picture that is your brand."
What are your Tweets about? What happens when you connect the dots?
